GHOST SHIP Read online

  “Sir!” Tasha rasped, sudden horror in her voice. “It’s—”

  “I see it. Full about. Power up the shields! Get that damned thing’s attention!”

  “Powering up,” Tasha said instantly. “Battle shields at full.”

  No matter how careful the plan, no matter the amount of hardware, the high-tech physics, the level of mathematics and detailed analysis—no matter any of that, mankind had never been able to second-guess, sideswipe, or overcome plain old bad luck. Who could know how long the thing had been roaming the galaxy, doing what it was doing today? There was no way to know what habits it had developed, what preferences, what impulses it had learned to follow. And who could know what it spotted?

  A glint of light off the saucer’s hull . . . a tiny leak of subatomic particles from the impulse fusion reactor . . . a high-frequency output from maintenance? These were things that would be completely ignored in the daily running of a starship. But somehow, something told the menace that this was the likeliest source of dinner. Its bug brain got stuck on the idea of that target instead of this one, and so it turned on the saucer.

  Picard spun to Worf. “Anything?”

  “No change, sir,” the Klingon said clearly and fiercely. “We’re putting out twenty times the energy being emitted from the saucer section right now, but it doesn’t seem impressed.”

  “Make a tight pass. We’ve got to draw it off.”

  Geordi LaForge fought to keep his hands from shaking on the controls at the idea of sweeping by that mass of ugly. What he saw with his enhanced vision was so vicious a knot of power that he avoided looking at the screen. He would fly on instruments; he would do as ordered. He would push the ship past that nightmare and swing around it on the end of an invisible rope.

  Too bad this ship didn’t have a chicken switch.

  The ship swung through space, doubling back toward the crackling energy field of its enemy. Now the saucer section was dominant in the viewscreen, and between them and it. A wall of blinding, snapping electrical tongues, a terrible prism to look through.

  LaForge increased speed without being told. He knew what he had to do. Give that firecracker a taste of raw antimatter.

  For one self-indulgent moment, he looked toward Data. The android was deceptively impassive, a human form wrapped in infrared, a man-figure of hot and cool places, all moving inside a glow. As nothing mechanical could, Data felt the gaze and returned it. He responded only with a significant lifting of his straight brows. Together, at least. Like soldiers should die if they must die at all.

  Behind them, Riker held the helm chair more tightly than he meant to. Now the screen before them was ablaze with the closeness. If luck went with them, they’d be in big trouble damned soon. A spear of anger pierced him when he saw the saucer section’s impulse drive come back on. Argyle knew it was following them now, and that they were too hopelessly slow to get away. Even so, like a turtle trying to get off a road in the middle of traffic, the big disk kept surging forward on full sublight. Frustration bent its ugly face over him. He wished Picard had insisted one of them stay. All at once the saucer section needed a real command and not just engineers.

  The entity stepped up speed to follow, and stardrive did the same, even faster. The ship tipped as LaForge swung it around in front of the enemy’s electrical body. As they passed it they saw that it was indeed more flat than round, a gigantic field of computer fakery, yet somehow completely animated, somehow walking around in space without the screen it was supposed to be displayed on. Its electrokinetic bands sparked and erupted as the stardrive section plowed past it and swished off in the other direction.

  Picard came up between Data and LaForge. “What the devil! Nothing?”

  “No response,” LaForge said, and somehow he was disappointed.

  “Worf!”

  “No explanation, sir,” Worf boomed. “It’s unrelenting on the saucer.”

  Data looked up and said, “Perhaps it is something more than an insect, Captain.” And as he said it, he looked across the small bridge at Deanna Troi, who stood now beside Tasha, ominously silent, leaving herself open to assault by mind weapon.

  “Shark,” Riker muttered.

  “Number One?”

  Riker turned to the captain. “It’s a shark focusing on one fish in a school. It ignores tastier morsels for the one it focuses on.”

  “Sir.” Troi spoke up suddenly. Her voice was a shock on the compact bridge. “We must draw it off. The saucer—”

  “Won’t stand the attack, I know, Counselor, I know. Shields to full power. Engineering, this is the captain. Have we got warp speed?”

  “MacDougal, sir, and barely. I can give you up to warp three.”

  “Do so! And I want an emergency antimatter dump on my mark—”

  Riker spun around. “Sir?”

  “We’re going to make damned sure it can’t ignore us again. We’re going to crash the gate, and right now. That thing is not going to—”

  “Sir!” Yar choked. “It’s closing on the saucer! Burst of speed at point-seven-five—”

  “Set course dead center on it, warp three and engage!”

  Both LaForge and Data actually cocked their heads toward each other as though to see if they’d both heard the same thing, and that the captain saw it.

  “I said engage!” he thundered. Then his voice lowered to a whisper, like a gathering volcano. “We’re going right through that pretty bastard.”

  Chapter Seven

  PICARD STOOD HIS battle bridge as though it were a chariot. In his hands he held the reins of chargers, in his eyes the image of the enemy.

  Even to Riker, who himself was a tree trunk of a man, Picard suddenly seemed larger than life. Every ship had its no-win scenario; this was theirs. Despite the primitive programming of that thing out there, it was very efficient and it had them cold. They were going to have to deal with it; there was no getting away.

  It filled the screen now, leaving no black edges, a wall of fulmination and color, just the kind of thing a mother tells her children never to touch, never even to think of touching. The stardrive section aimed its great cobra’s head for that wall and jammed forward at all the speed she could muster. And even warp three—warp anything—was impressive and terrifying enough for anyone in his right mind.

  In the last few seconds, Riker closed his eyes. He had to, to accept the fact that he was about to die to save the others. That was his unspoken duty, he knew; it was why the ship separated at all—when push came to shove, the stardrive section was expendable. They were supposed to sacrifice themselves, to step in front of the bullet. This was the whole idea.

  His thick body tightened. He’d tasted the metallic flavor of the thing’s attack before and now—

  Enterprise crashed into the electrical wall at dead center, and erupted into pyrotechnics with a deafening crack. Voltage snapped throughout the ship, accosting every panel, every living body, a terrible concussion after concussion. Spasms racked through, each one accompanied by a blitz of senseless lights. Riker heard Deanna shriek as it focused on her, but he couldn’t even turn around, couldn’t even look.

  Crack . . . CRAAAAAACK . . .

  And the ship burst out the other side—a shaken vessel, filled with shaken people, sucking a tail of spectral fire after it.

  “LaForge, veer into the asteroids! Engineering, this is Picard—”

  How could he talk? How could he still be getting sound up out of his throat?

  Riker tried to turn again, this time toward the captain, and this time he managed it. Picard was crouching against his command chair, one elbow locked over the chair’s arm, shouting into the intercom. “Engineering! Emergency antimatter dump on my mark—do you copy!”

  “Engineering . . . uh, we copy . . . ready when—”

  “LaForge, are we in those asteroids yet?”

  Trying to push his hands through a snapping electrical field that still swirled around his panel, LaForge pecked the course into the helm.
Each time he pecked, his fingers were assaulted by the churning voltage, but he kept on until the ship was driving itself into the dirty trail of preplanetary garbage between the gas giant and the star.

  Through a glittering cloud that filled the bridge from bulkhead to bulkhead and ceiling to floor, Riker strained to see Picard and beyond him, Deanna.

  She was crouching too, both hands holding on to the bridge rail, her face turned toward one arm as though to shield her eyes and perhaps much more of herself.

  But an instant later it was the viewscreen that snatched his attention, in time for him to see the thing drop the bone it was carrying and try to get the one it saw reflected in the stream. Its colors flared and it shot toward them, now huge on the screen, filling it, racing toward them at unimaginable speed. They’d done it—they’d attracted its attention. Too well. “Captain, it’s after us!” he shouted over the electrical lightning all around them.

  “Full speed!” Picard thundered. He too turned, looked, saw.

  “Entering asteroids now, sir,” LaForge called, his special sight barely able to stand the dance of lights around him.

  Picard’s voice rang through the ship. “MacDougal, dump the antimatter tank—now!”

  When the exhaust was triggered, it sounded for all the world like a giant toilet flushing. There was a swirl of sound, then a shudder crashed through the lower sections, and in a radical maneuver that was reserved for unexpected containment leaks, the ship regurgitated and dumped all the contents of her antimatter tank. Antimatter washed out from the nacelles and spewed into the asteroid belt. Wherever it struck matter in the vacuum of space, there was an explosion—a huge one. An explosion that whipped its tendrils of fire this way and that for thousands of miles, some hundreds of thousands. Each blow and its corresponding halo of smaller blows sent matter/ antimatter shock waves plunging across space, rocking the starship forward each time as she raced to get away.

  The ship coursed through the asteroids and out the other side, but as soon as the antimatter was flushed the warp speed fell away and they dropped to an impulse crawl. Everyone on the bridge was thrown forward as the ship whined to compensate for the shocking drop in speed. Riker raised an arm to shield his eyes from the pyrotechnics still running amuck on the bridge, and found the viewscreen in time to see a string of bright yellow explosions, large, small, blinding.

  “Keep the shields a priority,” Picard gasped. “They’ll be weak on impulse power alone, and you may need to tap phaser energy to maintain them. Engineering, do you copy?” He was still hanging on to his chair somehow and funneling orders this way and that while he watched the thing settle into the asteroid belt and sit there eating explosions.

  Then one last splatter of color and voltage ignited on the bridge and shocked each of them like a jolt from an exposed circuit. But it wasted no more time. Now it whistled around the bridge with a kind of finality, drew its vortex into a knot, and latched onto Data as though sucked there. It hit him with a stiff hand, knocking him right out of his chair. For every volt of electricity the others were now suddenly spared, Data had to take up the slack. He was dragged sideways and driven backward against the bridge rail until the force could push him no farther. A red-orange envelope formed around him, sparks flashing inside it, and shook him. Within it he shuddered and gasped, the bellows that served as lungs being squeezed along with the rest of him.

  “No!” Geordi shouted. This time the menace was familiar, and neither it nor Geordi’s reaction was unexpected—by Riker or by Data.

  As Geordi bolted from his own chair, Riker caught him at the end of a good old boardinghouse reach, his hand clamping around Geordi’s arm like a vise. In the same instant Data used one of those awful squeezes to gasp out, “Stay away! Geordi—”

  The static sizzled across Geordi’s hand as he reached out, but Data’s command made him draw back again. Through his visor he stared at the devilish infrared sheath, and it spat back at him with a strangely comprehensible warning.

  “LaForge, as you were!” Picard maneuvered between them. He examined the white field of static as it snapped around Data.

  If Data could feel pain, he was feeling it now. If they had any doubt that he could, for this moment they had none.

  Riker came around forward of Data, keeping just clear of the static envelope. Only once did he look away from it, only long enough to check on Troi. She was on the upper deck, gripping the rail, staring over it at them, her face lined with concern and anticipation. But she looked okay for now, considering.

  “Captain,” Riker began, holding out a hand as though to steady the situation, “if we can talk to it now—”

  LaForge pushed forward, stopped only by the presence of Picard. “No! We’ve got to get him out of it!”

  “This might be our only chance,” Riker insisted.

  “He doesn’t deserve to be on your sucker list, Mr. Riker,” LaForge said bitterly, just short of snarling.

  “I know,” Riker told him. “I know. Move back. That’s an order. Captain . . . ”

  Picard made a half-circle around the android and the force that held him. “Yes . . . yes . . . steady, everyone.” He moved in so closely that the static field ran down his arms and legs and caused ripples on his skin. “Data, can you hear me?”

  The crackling settled down suddenly. It was as though a balloon popped and shrank to its natural shape, ugly transparent colors wrapping Data and schooling around him. His breathing lost some of its gaspiness, though he still panted and strained against what was obviously still an attack. His eyes were fixed on the dimly lit battle bridge ceiling, but working as though there were words up there to read. He blinked and squinted, fighting for meaning in what he saw. His arms were flared at his sides, his hands spread, long fingers twitching.

  Riker moved to the captain’s side very slowly, and spoke in low tones barely above whispers. “There’s some kind of harmonic sympathy going on. Like radio waves causing a crystal to vibrate. Somehow, he’s compatible with it.”

  Picard nodded, once.

  “Data?” he began again. “Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

  For a time there was nothing.

  Then, the tiniest “Yes . . . ”

  The response went through them all like a knife.

  “Data, speak to me,” the captain prodded, using his resonant voice for the effective tool it was.

  “I . . . ”

  “Go on. Try harder. I’m listening. Go on.”

  “Sub . . . circuit . . . com . . . com . . . ”

  “Communication?”

  “Yes . . . ”

  “That’s what I was hoping to hear. Can you talk to it?”

  Data’s brushstroke features contorted with frustration. “I can’t . . . can’t transmit . . . ”

  “Keep trying. Stay calm, everyone. No one move. Worf, report.”

  Even the Klingon was driven to lower his voice in the presence of the vortex’s assault on Data. “Still chewing the antimatter reactions in the asteroid belt, sir. No sign of changing course.”

  “Speaking to you . . . ”

  Her voice was soft, but this time it had an inflection they didn’t recognize, one that made them turn to her now in spite of Data’s entrapment as Deanna Troi stepped stiffly down to the main deck. Riker reached out for her and she took the hand he offered, but her expression was that of one who was looking into a blinding light. The same as Data’s now—seeing something that wasn’t there.

  “Your language,” she murmured. “I speak in.”

  Riker was holding her hand, and now he began a hesitant step that would draw him right up close.

  “No,” Picard said sharply then, gesturing him back. With an extra push he nudged Riker away and came between them, quite aware of Troi’s hand, suddenly empty, reaching for Riker’s as it fell away. So part of her was here, at least.

  “Who are you?” Picard began carefully.

  Troi’s eyes began to tear with the strain. “All . . . you end . .
. ”

  “We don’t understand. We don’t know what you are,” the captain clearly said.

  Troi began to tremble, a bone-deep trembling that came as much from her own effort as from the effect of whatever was happening to her. Despite Picard’s renouncement of folklore and ghost stories, the battle bridge took on the hazy elemental aura of a seance. Troi herself was like a specter now, a thing of dark times, of times when ignorance made indelible marks upon the imaginations of all men for all time. She was a whisper of legend somehow transferred into the present. Her hair glowed, ebony beneath the flashings, and in spite of all the lights from Data’s assailant, her eyes were their usual pumice black. Yet in the midst of enchantment there was also the conscious work of a scientist. And never once were they allowed to forget that Data was also involved; the snapping brightness from the vortex around him slithered across Troi’s face in a constant and patternless reminder.

  Riker stepped tentatively toward her, and was grateful that Picard didn’t try to stop him. “Deanna . . . ” he began. Then he had nothing to say afterward.

  Troi forced herself to speak. Somehow they could see and understand that the insistence was hers and no one else’s. “You . . . can end . . . it.”

  The captain squinted as though he could see the words. Something about the way she said it made him motion the bridge to silence.

  Her voice—still soft. A raspy whisper only. But it held a power, a decisiveness Picard hadn’t expected to hear at such a moment. And when the statement was over, it was completely over. Her effort slid off, she was allowed a deep breath, and the light patterns reflecting on her face began to fade.

  Riker and Picard spun about, and sure enough Data was looking more like Data and less like a Fourth of July sparkler.

  “No one move!” Picard warned. “Wait till it’s completely gone.”

  In spite of the order, Riker sidled toward Troi, keeping his eye on her while Data glittered in his periphery, and when she suddenly collapsed, he was almost beside her.

  The color fled from her face, and Troi dropped so sharply that Riker almost missed her completely. He was able to catch her upper arm and keep her head from striking the bridge rail, but she turned in his grip like a dangling fish until he could rearrange himself and lay her down on the deck. He knelt beside her, brushed the trailing black curls from her forehead, and looked up in time to see the same thing happen to Data.